


Tomorrow Has Monsters

by Artemis1000



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fear, M/M, Magic, Mind Games, Past Abuse, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 21:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21326863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: “Wearing his face won’t save you, demon!”Blond hair fluttering in no wind at all and eyes glowing lyrium-blue, the demon laughed.Trapped by a demon wearing Anders's face, Fenris has to face both his feelings for Anders and the fears that keep him from acting on them.
Relationships: Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 87





	Tomorrow Has Monsters

“Wearing his face won’t save you, demon!”

Blond hair fluttering in no wind at all and eyes glowing lyrium-blue, the demon laughed.

Fenris darted forward with a snarl, swinging his greatsword in a wide arc to behead the vile creature in one swoop. His sword closed in but just before it could sunder the demon’s head from its body, the demon dissolved into black smoke - again. Fenris was left to glare and growl at thin air - again.

“But he and I are the same,” it purred, its voice pitched to something low and intimate and almost seductive in all its gloating – Anders’s voice, but not as Anders had ever spoken to Fenris outside of his most secret, dirtiest fantasies, and even then seduction had never sounded so menacing.

He whirled around, finding the demon at the far end of the cavernous hall. It still wore Anders’s face – Justice’s face, rather, for the thing wasn’t satisfied mocking him with what he couldn’t have, it had to remind him of just how foolish it was to want Anders at all.

“You know it’s true.” It smiled. That predatory smile was nothing like Anders’s, not that he smiled often around Fenris – this was a smile he only saw Anders wearing in his nightmares. “He is an abomination, possessed by a demon. You would know. You call him one all the time.”

Fenris inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. His hands felt almost numb around Lethendralis’s hilt, yet he squared his shoulders and braced himself for the next attack. He would try again, just as soon as the demon drew nearer. There was nothing else to do, he couldn’t escape the thing. He had tried to lose it but it had hunted him through the labyrinthine tunnels until he found himself back in the same underground hall.

“He’s nothing like you!” he spat, yet the denial felt false even to his own ears. It was true. He had called Anders a demon and an abomination far too often to play the part of indignant knight in shining armor.

“He is,” this false Anders insisted gleefully. It circled around Fenris, slowly drawing closer and observing him with eager glowing eyes as if Fenris were nothing but an interesting toy.

Fenris did his best not to shiver under its scrutiny. These looks were familiar, though not from Anders.

“He hungers for destruction, too. He denies it. He denies his true nature.” The demon twisted Anders’s lips into a smile that could almost have been his, it was gentler and a little sad. Fenris had seen him look at his patients like that when all he could do was ease their passing. “You know the truth. You know he wants to see you bleed.” It licked its lips. “Just like I do.”

Fenris gritted his teeth, he lifted his chin in proud defiance he didn’t quite feel anymore. “I served Danarius. Your mind games are child’s play compared to his.”

“Ah. Danarius. The first mage for whom you found excuses.” The demon stopped behind him and it took all Fenris had to suffer an enemy at his back and wait for the perfect moment. “Will you find excuses for him, too? There is no shame in giving in, you know.” Fingers trailed over his back in a mockery of a caress. He wore armor yet Fenris felt the demon’s fingers, icy and clawed as if they raked over his bare skin. “It has always been in your nature to submit to your betters,” the demon hissed. “He will never love you. He knows it is his rightful place to be your master, as it is yours to be a mage’s slave.”

He opened his mouth to defend that he would never again have a master, then caught himself and snapped it shut again. This was wrong. His body shook with rage but Fenris forced himself to keep quiet until he could trust himself to speak without unleashing every hurt churning in him. “No.”

“No?” the thing wearing Anders’s face jeered. It was so much more open in its cruelty than the demon that had bested him in Feynriel’s dreams. That one had known how to play the game. “Are you sure? Is that not what you are doing already, every day you don’t report the abomination? Or are you waiting for him to kill before you act?”

“No.” His voice felt weak but he knew his hands would be steady – and more than that, Fenris knew he was done being toyed with. This thing, it couldn’t compare to Danarius, it couldn’t even compare to Hadriana and most of all, its acting skills were the worst he had ever seen. He shook his head, silver-white hair flying every which way with the jerky motion. “I won’t play your games.”

Fenris attacked.

A flurry of attacks, yet the demon remained always just a hair’s breadth ahead of him.

He would have liked to say he was furious – and he was – but mostly he was bitterly unsurprised. It was the same time and again. Taunts and battle and more taunts in an endless cycle. Fenris couldn’t remember how long he had been trapped in this cavernous hall with only the demon for company or how he had ended up here. Every time he tried to push past the fog in his memory, the demon would change tactics and demand his full attention.

It grew bored of dancing away from his blade and vanished before he could give it so much as a nick.

“Face me already, you coward!” he bellowed, though he knew already it would be to no avail.

He had fought both mages and demons before and they all made mistakes sooner or later but this thing, it was like he was fighting himself – a him that lived just a blink of an eye in the future and knew every move before he made it. It didn’t even have a weapon though the mage whose face it wore would never be seen without his staff. Even worse, it could sense the lyrium within him, it knew the moment he activated his markings. There was no surprising it.

“Only if you promise to play nice,” the demon purred in a seductive voice Anders had certainly never used where Fenris could hear it. “We don’t have to fight. There are far more enjoyable things we could do. Haven’t you been wondering about his electricity trick ever since Isabela first mentioned it?”

Arms snaked around Fenris from behind. He stiffened, both at the touch and in surprise. There had been no footsteps to warn him.

“Don’t you want to know what he tastes like?” The demon’s breath was cold as it whispered into his ear. Fenris had always pictured Anders as all heat, like the hands that would touch him during healing. Sometimes they lingered and Anders would give him these sad, wistful looks before he caught himself and made some terrible joke that enraged Fenris enough to forget that he had wanted Anders’s hands to stay. By the time he remembered it would be too late, the walls between them insurmountable again – and usually a little bit higher than before. “Don’t you want to know what you could have if you didn’t fear that the only way he will ever want you is to own you?”

Fenris forced his hands to release his sword. It clattered to the floor, the sound impossibly loud.

“Good boy,” the demon hissed and Fenris’s skin crawled. With every minute, it was reminding him more of Danarius than Anders and he couldn’t even tell if that wasn’t on purpose.

He turned when the thing prompted him to and looked into Anders’s face.

Fenris was a warrior. He was also a highly practical survivor with rogue friends. When Isabela had presented him with a wickedly sharp knife to tuck under his gauntlet, just in case Danarius ever caught up to him, he had not been too proud to accept it.

Anders’s eyes looked at him with fondness now but they were still glowing blue-white, the abomination’s eyes, Justice’s eyes.

The thing tilted its head and leaned in. “You…”

His hand was firm and precise when he stabbed it in the back, aimed right to pierce the heart.

The demon gasped and sank to its knees. The Fade light faded. It truly bore Anders’s face now – no glowing eyes, no blue-white cracks. “You killed me.” Blood spilled from his lips and the stain that impossibly grew on the front of his robes darkened. “You kill everything you love.”

“Fenris! Fenris, you stubborn mule of an elf, I swear by Andraste’s…”

Fenris opened his eyes to the sight of Anders kneeling over him. He was in the same cavern as before but Anders wasn’t bleeding.

“Mage. You’re too loud.”

Anders made an annoyed noise as he sat back on his haunches. “Is that the thanks I get for saving you?”

Fenris squinted at him. No blood. No glowing eyes. No demonic behavior, either, just… the mage being his obnoxious self. Fenris squeezed his eyes shut. “I killed you.”

Anders scoffed. “Every night in your dreams, I’m sure.”

He shook his head, too drained to argue or take offense. His entire body was aching and even lying flat on his back was incredibly exhausting. How long had he been running and fighting? “There was a demon,” he insisted, though he felt far too weak to give his voice the urgency warranted. “It looked like you. I killed it.”

“No. You triggered a spell. You just had to run ahead because you don’t trust me to know what I’m talking about when it comes to magic!” Anders gave another huff. “But no, the abomination must be plotting to kill you so you walk into a trap and nearly get yourself killed all without my help!” Anders clenched his jaw. “When I found you, you were near dead. Entropy magic. A nightmare spell to weaken you by confronting you with your fears while that ugly statue over there was draining your life.”

This time, he found the energy to shake his head. “I didn’t dream the demon, it was here! It had me trapped in one of its illusions!”

Anders continued to look highly skeptical, bordering on scornful. “And why would it try to tempt you? Demons prefer to target mages.”

Fenris fought through the exhaustion to sit up, already fed up with Anders’s looming. “Maybe because you are already possessed, _abomination_?”

He looked as if he had bitten into a lemon. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what it was. It’s over. We will return later with a larger group and sweep this part of the tunnels. If there is a demon here I’d rather not fight it by myself anyway.” He got to his feet. “Right now, we need to find a way out and track down the others. I don’t think either of them got hurt when the cave-in separated us but I can’t say for sure.”

Fenris nodded and forced himself to his feet as well. “You speak sense for once. But it was a demon. I know what I experienced.” It had to have been one. A spell to show him his fears? He would have known if magic was being worked on him; certainly, he would have felt it. Maybe everything he had seen was an illusion but the worst fear his own mind would come up with couldn’t possibly be Anders.

“Trust me,” Anders snapped, “I’m not happy either that your way of dealing with your irrational fear of magic is to kill me.” He shook his head and took the lead. His pace was fast, his steps long. It was his upset gait. Usually, he didn’t get to that until Fenris had called him an abomination or insulted his precious demon. “Unbelievable,” Fenris heard him mutter, “fear of magic and it’s me you see. Not a slaver from Tevinter, not even Merrill who is an actual blood mage but the healer who is trying to save your life while you are dreaming of killing him.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

Anders came to a full stop and whirled around to face him. “Then tell me what it was, if not another display of your insufferable bigotry!” His face was turning red with anger, a look which Fenris usually found far more charming than he would ever admit.

Now he could barely think at all. Fenris stood there, frozen. The demon or nightmare spell or whatever it was had gotten Anders all wrong. It was the only thought he could hold on to. It hadn’t understood Anders at all.

“Well?” the real Anders demanded, bristling with indignation. “No accusations and insults to spew? I don’t believe you have filled your daily quota of calling me a demon yet.”

Fenris gritted his teeth. He brushed past him, not even trying to resist the childish urge to jostle him in passing. Anders grumbled something about Andraste’s something or other but let him pass. “Didn’t you want to find the others before they die under a pile of rubble, mage?”

For once, Anders remained blessedly silent and Fenris found himself grateful for it. Neither of them was at their best when they were tired and worried, and he didn’t want to say something he would later regret. He regretted many things said in the heat of the moment but by the time the anger left him, it was always far too late to go back on his words. With Hawke, he could and would apologize. With Anders, though? He would never believe him, even if Fenris could bring himself to brave the gloating.

He was alert, yet Fenris’s thoughts kept returning to the thing that had worn Anders’s face. Whether the demon was real or conjured up by his own mind, he couldn’t shake its words. It hadn’t been anything like Anders, it hadn’t even tried to be a convincing mimic and yet…

His ears picked up two familiar female voices followed by laughter.

“It’s Hawke and Merrill! Hurry up,” Fenris said, speeding up further. He could only hope that Anders would put it on his eagerness to get out of this subterranean labyrinth and out of his company, and not that he was trying to escape the things he had seen.

He needed to get out of here. Just as soon as they had escaped this place, he would be able to put Anders and the demon out of his mind. Anders would go back to starring in his late-night fantasies and being nothing but a pesky annoyance in real life, just as it should be.

The demon knew nothing about his thoughts or his fears. Nothing. He would prove it, Fenris promised himself even as he shied away from the memory of Anders’s face twisted into Danarius’s cruelty. He would prove it meant nothing to him.

“So eager to get away from your worst fear?” Anders quipped, sounding infuriatingly chipper.

Right. As if he even cared what the mage said or thought or did.

“I’m always eager to get away from you, abomination.”

“I know,” Anders said, subdued.

Fenris opened his mouth to retort sharply, something crueler to keep upping the ante as they usually did in their arguments, yet the words just wouldn’t come.

He should have been eager to win their argument yet in his mind, all he could hear were the demon’s last words: _You kill everything you love._


End file.
